Data traffic on networks, particularly on the Internet, has increased dramatically over the past several years, and this trend will continue with the rapid growth of e-commerce and other services on the Internet requiring greater bandwidth. With this increase in data traffic on networks, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of computer equipment rooms, known as “server rooms,” used to house the equipment necessary to support data traffic routing. Furthermore, the increasing dependency of companies on their Internet presence has created an urgency to keep the server rooms up and running at all times. Industry estimates show that there are over 400,000 such rooms currently in existence in the United States.
The growth in Internet traffic has prompted many businesses to construct a server room to allow their employees to access Internet information or enable e-commerce and store data. As such, continuous server up time has become important. Keeping track of numerous computers, along with associated bridges, routers, backup power supplies, etc., can be a formidable task. A large company with server rooms in more than one city might well be faced with spending thousands of dollars on software packages to keep their equipment running. Dedicated technicians are also needed to monitor network equipment and issue work orders to repair failed units.
While reliable, modern computer systems cannot tolerate excess heat, dust or humidity. Heat can rapidly cause equipment deterioration. Failure of cooling fans can reduce equipment lifetime to days or hours. A single high-speed LAN (local area network) failure can cause slow system response. These and other such failures within the equipment in a server room occur routinely and can cause great disruption to a business.
Typical solutions only permit inspection of devices on a local basis. Others permit a technician to inspect geographically diverse installations from a central console. However, all of these solutions are expensive to implement, complex, and difficult to maintain and train personnel to use them.
As a result, small to medium companies having small to medium networks are left in the position of requiring a means to monitor and maintain their computer network equipment from failing while not having the resources to afford the high-priced solutions. Many firms cannot afford a high-end solution or simply do not have the time and resources to train their IT personnel to learn and use complex systems. Instead, the typical monitoring method in many such companies is user complaints to the IT manager to indicate when a problem has occurred.
This is especially true for companies having multiple server rooms and that have concerns about routine access to each of these rooms. Additionally, concerns exist with current solutions regarding the manpower intensiveness of these solutions. Most network monitoring solutions can consume a full or part-time employee. The financial justification for these systems is, therefore, difficult because network equipment typically fails yearly or on a disaster basis, and the cost of recovery is seen as less than that of maintaining a full-time employee to routinely monitor the equipment.
Similar concerns exist for monitoring rack-mounted components. Typical problems include localized environmental excesses leading to failure. Another problem is theft. Typical monitoring solutions do not provide for video imaging of remote server locations over a network. Computer equipment is typically placed in server rooms for two reasons: security and environmental control. Remote video imaging of a server room over a network can provide for maintaining security of the equipment despite the lack of a physical presence on site.
A typical computer room can house hundreds of devices, ranging from expensive server grade computers to bridges, routers, uninterruptible power supplies and telephone equipment. A server room's environment requires monitoring because out-of-limit environmental variables can eventually affect the equipment in the room. For example, high temperatures, humidity (for example, from water leaks), or lack of airflow can detrimentally affect the equipment. Similarly, alarms, such as smoke and fire alarms, or the status of room openings, are important to determine. While the expense of replacing server room components if they fail is great, currently existing monitoring solutions are not cost effective for smaller-sized companies to implement despite the potential costs of such losses.
These typical monitoring systems use a centralized application. While these mechanisms can be quite effective, they introduce additional costs, through additional software, hardware, configuration, administration, and network bandwidth.
Beyond the application to server rooms and rack mountings of network equipment, various other monitoring systems suffer from the same failures and deficiencies associated with information accessibility, organization, and presentation.
As such, many typical network monitoring systems suffer from deficiencies in information accessibility, organization, and presentation. Many other problems and disadvantages of the prior art will become apparent to one skilled in the art after comparing such prior art with the present invention as described herein.